Palm's Pre

Alex made me aware of Palm's new handheld that they introduced on this year's CES in Las Vegas: the Pre.



After quickly reading through some reviews I was impressed.

Palm had taken over the mobile device market not long after Apple had abandoned the sophisticated, but quite unsuccessful Newton. They pretty much owned the category until they faced more serious competition (and serious trouble) from a new breed of mobile devices like the Blackberrys and Window's Mobile platform devices - the very competition that has just been smashed to smithereens by the iPhone.

Palm seemed like a lost case these last years, but after reading about their new Pre, I was so curious that I just had to watch Palm's presentation at CES.

And gee! Here I think we see for the first time serious competition for the iPhone!
I don't think the Blackberrys, Samsungs, Google Phones and whatever other devices we have seen throughout the last months are. The Pre can be.

The difference is, that the Pre has a better overall concept and some true innovation that partly builds on top of what the iPhone does.
Yes, it seems to be a copycat in some of its functionalities, but it also handles contacts in a much broader scale than Cupertino's holy grail by being more effective in collecting all the information from desktop and cloud. There is a very clean multitasking. And clever handling of messages through all communication channels. Plus wireless charging - a little thing, but this shows that Palm did not only put thought into the Pre but also heart and a love for details.

Palm is strong in its design approach, too. In my eyes there is no question that the sleek design and user interface of the iPhone makes Apple's device the stronger product. For my part, I don't want to have a slideout keyboard and I want the bigger screen.

Any yet, the Pre comes close and will definitely offer some customers what they miss in the iPhone.
The Pre should hit the US in the first half of 2009 with Sprint as pre-selected provider.